


that he on dry land loveliest liveth

by skyvehicle



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: Anxiety, Gen, PTSD, Panic, Rowing, but spoilers up through the beginning of Queens' Play, galleys, set before Game of Kings, slavery & imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-09 23:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13491687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyvehicle/pseuds/skyvehicle
Summary: After Lymond escapes from the galleys, he calls on Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox.





	that he on dry land loveliest liveth

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you as always, R, for the opinions, for the help, for the emotional support, and for spending hours talking through the actual plot and all the actual European history going on behind the scenes of these books.
> 
> this fic's title is from The Seafarer, by Ezra Pound.

His doublet is too tight.

It isn’t his doublet, exactly. It belongs to Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, upon whose English doorstep a cargo box containing one Francis Crawford of Lymond, freshly sprung from the travaux forcés, was delivered that very morning.

It is also rather loose, actually, as Lennox is both taller and broader than Lymond. But Lymond feels the fabric buttoned at his throat every time he swallows and it feels like he can’t breathe even though he clearly can breathe and is clearly fine.

The boots don’t fit either - they belong to a member of Lennox’s household, and are too large. Lymond has been barefoot for two years, as galley slaves were not permitted to wear shoes, and so it is a luxury not worth commenting on.

Lymond keeps his hands pressed together, clasped together, or flat against his thighs, anything to stop people from seeing. He longs for a pair of leather gloves to hide in, but attired as he is in borrowed clothes, he is not in the position to ask.

When Lennox comes up and claps him on the arm, Lymond breathes in sharply through his nose, his mouth a tight line of resolution to not startle like a child. “Two years, was it?” Lennox says. “I won’t envy the poor souls who find themselves under the point of your sword now, with arms like these.”

“It’s hardly precision work, rowing,” Lymond says. It’s strange to not have to pitch his voice over the roar of the sea. Everything is too quiet. Everyone is too still. His own voice throbs in his ears like a carillon. “Honestly, I’d be much better suited now for something more blunt. A club, for instance. Yes, I should be well at home with something so rough and brutal.”

Three things occur to him in that moment: The warmth in his hands, the result of friction. The sound — _shhh-shhh, shhh-shhh_ — of skin rubbing against cloth. The look on Lennox’s face, equal parts curiosity, embarrassment and unease.

Only after processing these three separate things does Lymond realize that he’s been rubbing his palms up and down his thighs. _shhh-shhh, shhh-shhh_. With effort, he stills his hands.

“I think we can find a better use for you than on my security detail,” Lennox says, smiling with all the charm of a man who betrayed his home country for gold and reputation overseas.

 

 

Two years of subsiding on stale bread, gruel and weak ale puts Lymond in a difficult position when their supper arrives. His stomach twists in on itself. The aroma of the dishes laid out before him appeal to his baser instincts, but already he knows he won’t be able to stomach any of it. He’s hungry, though. So he tries.

It feels strange to be idle like this. He feels as if he’s about to be whipped for just sitting there, useless and inactive. The rowing starts up again on its own volition, without any guidance from his mind.

He thinks, as he watches that uncomfortable look unfold again on Lennox’s face, that at least his subconscious mind is still set on self-preservation. Keep rowing, or you’ll be whipped.

The whole ordeal is a lesson in the duality of man. The Earl of Lennox is a traitor to crown and country, reprehensible in every way, and yet he is kind. He is patient and generous, offering Lymond food, clothes, lodging and work, making no comment when Lymond sets down his fork after barely touching his meal.

“Perhaps you would like to retire for the night,” Lennox even says, the paragon of virtue and intuitive generosity, freeing Lymond not just from imprisoned slavery but from having to force himself into conversational alertness for however long the evening was supposed to have gone on.

“I thank you, my lord,” Lymond says, bowing to the traitor on his way out.

He manages to drift asleep after some uneasy hours of his body instinctively bracing for the tilt and sway that never comes. Everything is too still. He knows he’s on land, but his body has not yet accepted this as fact. He lies flat on his back and tries to convince his limbs that this stillness is natural, now. That he, too, must be still. Every time he shuts his eyes, he feels the ghost of a lurch, starboard to port, bow to stern.

When he does manage to fall asleep, he dreams of Lennox, coming down to see rowers. That first time, in the spring of ’43, he and Lennox’s eyes had met across the cramped, crowded galley. Lennox’s eyes had widened with recognition, and half a year later Lymond found himself rowing Lennox’s ship once again. Matthew Stewart had made his way down the aisle to where Lymond sat as leader of his bench, bearing the heaviest weight. Had been able to hear Lymond’s fierce voice, barely audible over the sounds of the ship and the sea. “My lord. Give me an address, and I shall write you in winter.”

“You’ll… I beg your pardon, you’ll _write_?”

“Yes,” Lymond said, blinking and shaking hair and sweat from his eyes. “A simple name and location will suffice. You were nearly made King of Scotland. Surely, you must be doing well enough without the crown to still have contacts who report to you.”

“My Lord, come above,” called the man who had let Lennox come below to survey the rowers. “You needn’t trouble yourself with the wretches down here.”

“Yes. Truly, the stench is appalling,” Lennox had called back to his companion on the stairs, turning to go.

“ _Lennox_ ,” Lymond had hissed then, launching into his coup de grace. “You think I don’t know what cargo is weighing down this very ship in this very moment? Quite a heavy load. This French gold is meant for Scotland, I believe. And yet we are sailing north-west on a course set for England.”

“Yes, well,” Lennox had said, turning back to Lymond. “the weather being what it is, the captain wanted to keep the ship close to the coast. We’ll be up and around in Scotland in no time.”

The galley slaves were not granted the luxury of knowing where they were sailing on any given voyage, but Lymond had a working mind in his skull yet, and was still able to ascertain their heading from the wind and the position of the sun, as glimpsed through the holes where the oars came through. “And when we make port on English soil and I see the gold unloaded and carted off by men bearing your flags?”

Lennox had fallen silent. Lymond, sweating and straining against the weight of his oar, had beaten him.

“An address. _Please_ ,” Lymond had said then, trying to keep the desperation from creeping into his voice. Trying not to let the hammering of his heart overwhelm him entirely.

Lennox had laughed, then. “This certainly was enjoyable, paying a visit below deck to the manpower making my ship run. Gentlemen, I think you all for your efforts!” He leaned in close to Lymond and spat: “What could you possibly do to me from here, chained to a bench?”

“It’s true, I am in chains. But my tongue, my lord, is not. And I have the means, as I mentioned, to get letters out in winter. Not enough to keep up a proper correspondence, unfortunately, but I make do.”

“And you think anyone would take the word of a slave over the word of an Earl?”

“De Guise won’t let it rest,” Lymond had replied. “Word will get back to France eventually. The gold will be found, and you will be arrested. Have you any allies across the border? Are you willing to risk it?”

Miraculously, Lennox had not been willing to risk it, and had given Lymond an address. Less miraculous was Lymond’s ability to commit the address to memory, reciting it like a poem to the rhythm of the oars until it was as much a part of him as every other poem he’d hissed through clenched teeth, his muscles straining against the currents of the sea. It was no miracle at all that Lymond was able to get a letter to Lennox — he had only to submit to his jailer, cocking his hips and blinking up at him through his eyelashes, licking his lips and angling his torso to allow his torn shirt to fall open, revealing his well-muscled chest. The letter Lymond sent contained as much information as he was able to glean (again, angling his hips, letting his shirt open, looking up through the eyelashes, etc.) about what his ship assignment and schedule would be in the spring. The rest hinged on faith that Lennox would send along some form of rescue or means for Lymond to escape. Considering Lymond’s current position, tossing and turning in a bedroom in Lennox’s estate in England, Lennox followed through.

Lymond dreams now that Lennox never saw him, or saw him but did not recognize him, or recognized him but did not rise to his challenge, or rose to his challenge but paid one of the guards to have Lymond whipped to death. He dreams of seeing only the back of Lennox’s head across the crowded, darkened galley and knowing that he was going to die chained to a bench, and that the sea would wash his blood away before it ever had the chance to seep into the wood.

He wakes with a violent start, clawing at his nightshirt, his face wet. Everything is quiet. Everything is still. He is on land, in a bed, in borrowed clothes, no bodies on either side of him, no chains at his ankles, no oars in his hands. He is the only source of movement and sound, gasping, panting, straining against the palpable wrongness of it all.

He presses his hands into his thighs and rubs up and down, up and down. It doesn’t feel right, but it’s the only thing remotely familiar. His heart races, and though he is tired, he does not sleep.

 

 

The morning comes, and with it the relief that Lymond can set aside the pretense of trying to sleep. He steels himself and dresses carefully in his borrowed clothes, buttoning the doublet at his throat and trying to remember that this is supposed to feel normal now.

Logically, he knows he was lucky. He spent only two years at the oars, which hardly compares to those poor souls who will spend the remainder of their lives in the galleys, who will row themselves to death. He knows this in the same way that he knows he is on dry land, in that it all makes perfect sense and yet the facts still don’t quite register.

Breakfast is a challenge, but again, Lymond makes an effort. He allows himself to be distracted by Lennox’s discussion. A lot can happen in two years, and despite overhearing plenty of gossip from his bench below deck and his prison cell on land, Lymond is eager to be properly caught up.

He also is in need of earning Lennox’s trust.

Lennox, fortunately, has the same idea, thus saving Lymond from having to direct the conversation himself.

“Why were you not ransomed back with the others?” he says, his voice light and inconsequential. “After Solway. Most of the men were sent back to Scotland. Why not you?”

In truth, Lymond did not yet know the answer to this question himself. His past two years of misery, fury, torture and hard labor were enough of a struggle just to survive, let alone to maintain the kind of thinking that would get him to the bottom of what he thought was surely a conspiracy being waged against him. After the the battle of Solway Moss, Margaret Douglas had liberated him from the Tower of London and gave him a bed in her own home. He never did make much use of that bed, for Margaret had invited him into her own bed more often than not.

Margaret had also arranged an English estate for him, granted by her uncle the King. She had expertly succeeded in separating him from his men, all while giving him enough physical distraction to stop him from asking too many questions. Lymond had given Margaret everything she had asked of him. He was still a prisoner in his own mind, and had wanted only to survive, not to mention the biological imperative that won out over all the restrictions of his better judgment. A hand on his cock was impossible to ignore, no matter how close that hand was to the English throne.

“England did not send me back to Scotland,” Lymond says, swallowing past the lump in his throat, “because I was working _with_ England to bring Scotland to heel.”

Lennox’s face lights up with the realization. It is clear that he believes Lymond's lie outright, evidently grateful to have what he thinks is a companion in treason. Lymond feels increasingly unwell.

“I apologize for my behavior on the ship,” he continues, “but there wasn’t time to explain and I needed your attention. Surely you can understand that I was desperate.”

“My dear boy, there is no need to apologize. Of course you are forgiven. Besides, who knows how many of those other slaves could have sent letters against me about the nature of the cargo as well.”

“Not very many,” Lymond admitted. “Rowing is difficult work, and all are sure to have their means of persuasion beaten out of them eventually.”

“Means of…?”

“You are lucky,” Lymond says, “that I was as green as I was when you came aboard. Another year or so at the oars and I’d have looked as unappealing as the rest of the lot. ”

Lennox has that look on his face again, that look of curiosity tinged with discomfort he had adopted in response to Lymond’s hands involuntarily rubbing up and down his thighs the day before. Lymond spares a glance under the table. His hands are clasped together in his lap, trembling slightly but otherwise entirely still.

“Well,” Lennox said, swiftly changing the subject. “You’re welcome here as long as you’ll have me. I’d be grateful to have a mind like yours on my service.”

“In service to England, you mean,” Lymond corrects him.

Lennox laughs again, the look on his face disappearing into crows’ feet and smile lines. “Take all the time you need until you are well again, and then we shall get started in earnest.”

It is more than just the food in Lymond’s stomach that has him making a hasty excuse moments later and sends him running to be sick in the privacy of his own room.

 

 

Lymond remembers the first time he was whipped. A few days into his imprisonment, the callouses on his palms tore open in unison, as if they’d been conspiring, on the smooth wood of the oar, so that he had dropped his hands into his lap, hunched and shuddering from the pain. His hands had held swords and daggers, had gripped the reins of his horse and the neck of his lute. They had danced over the keys of a harpsichord just the way his mother had taught him. They had turned pages of rare, expensive, delicate books. They had clasped hands of lords and dignitaries. They had held the ears of the first hare he killed on his first hunt. They had not been primed to withstand the rowing of a galley, even positioned as he was against the ship’s hull, where the guards normally placed the sick and the elderly.

The men on his bench had shouted at him. The man beside him had elbowed him. The man behind him had emphasized with a kick. Lymond tried, but could not get his hands to work properly for the pain, dropping them back into his lap in defeat. This was when the man came with the whip.

Lymond didn’t know the man’s name, only that he patrolled the galley in a position nearly as mundane as the rowing itself, walking up and down all day and night to survey his prisoners. Unlike the rowers, though, he was granted the satisfaction of being able to take pleasure from the pain of others. So it seemed, anyway, when he decided noisily that the damage done to his hands was not sufficient enough to justify a break in his work.

He used his whip to punctuate his scolding. Lymond had lost track of the lashes almost immediately. Eventually, the man with the whip had moved on.

At least this, Lymond had thought, slumped against the ship’s hull, watching through rapidly fading vision as the sea washed the floor clean of his blood, was sufficient an injury to justify a break in his work.

By the time the wounds on his back had healed enough for him to take to the oars again, the callouses on his palms had been long forgotten.

Lennox, on the other hand, does not justify breaks. He works diligently with Lymond, plotting and mapping and dictating and strategizing until his mood changes and he calls for a walk through his gardens, or a game of chess, or a bit of alcoholic refreshment. Lymond knows that no one is lurking behind him with a whip (and has checked over his shoulder many times just to be sure), but he still feels discomfited to take a break when there is still work to be done. If it were up to him, he would find some biological way to eliminate the need for sleep entirely, and work without stopping until all of the world’s problems have been solved.

But Lennox will encourage Lymond to read from his library, or examine his wardrobe for pieces he might want to borrow, or invite him to play on his harpsichord. After two years without music, without comfort, Lymond finds it difficult to resist this last one.

His thoughts drift to his own lute, back at Midculter. His father smashed one, yes, but Lymond had hidden a second lute behind a false wall he’d fashioned in his tower. It will be heinously out of tune and might need to be restrung entirely, but Lymond would see to it. He hadn’t let himself think of music for years, in too much pain both bodily and spiritually to do more than give voice to the poetry that clawed its way out of his throat on its own volition, chanting like a madman to the rhythm of the oars; but now, here, in the Earl of Lennox’s borrowed clothes, playing awkwardly at his harpsichord, Lymond can begin to imagine.

Lymond is seated at and playing on this very harpsichord that gave him back his comfort after two years when Lennox asks about Margaret Douglas.

“I am to make her my wife,” Lennox says, “to solidify my loyalty to England.”

“I am sure such a move will earn you England’s trust,” Lymond says.

“Well, man?” Lennox says, clapping Lymond on the shoulder and arresting his playing in the middle of a particularly complicated arpeggio. “You spent time with her. Tell me! What’s she like?”

“My Lord,” Lymond manages to say before his throat closes up entirely and he has to struggle to regain control of himself. He feigns a coughing spell for cover. “My lord, she is… generous.”

Lennox, who has crossed the room to pour drinks into two fragile looking glasses, swears. “Come on, Francis. You don’t have to be diplomatic with me.”

As if Lymond doesn’t already hate every aspect of this conversation, Lennox’s overly familiar address sets him entirely on edge.

“Well,” he says, because truly there is no escape “She freed me from the Tower and gave me an estate for my trouble. What else is there to say? She is a woman of means and is generous enough to share her wealth and position with others.”

Obviously, he leaves out a great deal of detail.

“Francis,” Lennox says again, drawing the name out slow and languid. He presses one of the drinks he’s just poured into Lymond’s hand and taps the glass with his own. “Already you’ve saved me from ruin at the hands of the Scottish regency, as well as rejection from England. You have given up a great deal to aid me, and I hope you would agree when I say that I feel there is a genuine friendship between us. Francis, my friend, I wish you would speak plainly.”

Lymond opens his throat and does away with the entire drink. Then he opens his mouth.

“She is ambitious,” he says, his chest buzzing. “Ruthlessly so. She has a history of ruining men’s lives. Two dead fiancees under her skirts already.”

“Then I’ll be sure to make it a brief engagement,” Lennox says, already howling with laughter.

“You’ll be wise to do so,” Lymond agrees.

With food still presenting a daily challenge for Lymond, Lennox’s proffered drink has gone straight to his head. He feels dizzy and light, and clings to his empty glass like a drowning man.

“Also,” he says, unable to stop himself, “don’t expect her to bleed on your wedding night, if you live long enough to reach it. She’s no blushing innocent.”

“Francis, you can’t be serious,” Lennox roars, tears streaming from his eyes.

“She is a worldly woman, and very experienced,” Lymond says, forcing his lips into some semblance of a smile, so as to appear friendly and trustworthy. In his mind, he forbids any more talk of Margaret Douglas to escape past his lips.

The empty glass, clasped in his hands, shatters.

Lennox exclaims and sets his own glass down on the harpsichord, gathering Lymond’s hands in his own. Lymond shudders, trying to pull away, but there is pain from the glass embedded in the flesh of his palms. There is blood welling up and sliding down his wrists and staining the white sleeves of Matthew Stewart’s borrowed shirt.

“It’s fine, I can still play,” Lymond mutters, trying a second time to pull his hands from Lennox’s grip.

“Francis, hold still. Let me help,” Lennox says.

“I can still play,” Lymond says again, pulling again.

“I don’t want you to play. I want you to sit still and let me get this glass out of your skin!”

Lymond wants to tell Lennox to stop touching him, to stop calling him Francis, to stop looking at him. The damage done to his hands is not sufficient enough to justify a break in his work, but Lymond supposed that this closeness (Lennox touching, Lennox seeing) is punishment enough.

Lennox says nothing, staring at Lymond’s hands, cradled in his own. His eyes glitter with fascination at this rare glimpse into horrors he can hardly imagine. Then he picks the shards of glass out of Lymond’s palms.

When it’s over, Lymond won’t even flinch when Lennox pours the remains of his drink on his hands to clean the wounds. His arms will flex, though, as he suppresses the urge to rub his palms up and down his thighs.

He will spend nine months with Lennox in total, working tirelessly, after which he will make his escape with Lennox’s stolen gold and a head full of information of immeasurable value. He will return home to Midculter only to be rejected by his father and chased off with a whip. Scotland herself will also want nothing to do with him, having branded him a traitor when his being chained to the oars kept him from fulfilling his summons to the court at Edinburgh. He will glean more secrets from the English army and work in the shadows to aid Scotland in spite of the price on his head. He will go to France, where he will lead a gang of outlaws from his estate at Sevigny, where their wild nights would live on in the memories of every man who survived working for Lymond (including Sevigny’s groundskeeper). Eventually, he will return to Scotland, and his name will be cleared.

A few years later, Lymond will be sailing from Ireland to France on a secret mission to protect the Scottish queen. He will be disguised as an Irish prince’s secretary and bard, dyeing his hair and wearing a false stomach. He will presume to pass the journey as a drunk, so as to avoid questioning by collapsing into convenient stupors. But as the ship lurches forward, propelled by the slaves and prisoners chained to the benches below deck, their bleeding hands pushing and pulling the galley’s 16 pairs of oars, Lymond will be truly grateful for the bottle of spirits clenched in his own scarred hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! After finally understanding the timeline of Solway Moss-era Lymond, I felt the impulse to get a bit creative with the whole Earl of Lennox situation. Truly, Lennox is such an interesting and weird character, and I wanted to explore his relationship with Lymond before Lymond's betrayal.


End file.
